What are we to make of the Anglosphere political leadership's abrupt narrative reversal towards immigration restrictionism and rhetorical nativism?

In the wake of America's 2024 election a curious narrative shift has been unfolding within the political leadership of Canada and Great Britain.

The moment he assumed the office of Prime Minister, Canada's Mark Carney played up the country's founding British and French (and, of course, Indigenous) heritage, referring to Canada as the 'most European of non-European countries', deploying nativist rhetoric that hasn't been heard from the country's Liberal politicians in living memory and thereby rejecting by implication the official stance of multiculturalism that has dominated Canadian politics since the elder Trudeau. To back up his commitment to Canada, Carney renounced his Irish and UK citizenships, symbolically burning his boats on the beach, and implicitly repudiating other members of parliament holding dual citizenships. As a further emphatic gesture towards Canada's historical roots, King Charles III will give the throne speech inaugurating the new parliament, the first time the monarch has delivered the throne speech in person since 1977.

Gary Lineker, a former England captain and the face of soccer on British television for over two decades, will leave the BBC, the broadcaster said in a statement on Monday.

Lineker, 64, had been due to cover the 2026 World Cup for the broadcaster, but his early departure comes after he apologised last week for sharing a social media post about Zionism which featured a picture of a rat, historically used as an antisemitic insult.

Even the need for transition - just to be clear - has only just begun to be recognised in the U.S.

For the European leadership however, and for the beneficiaries of financialisation who haughtily lament Trump's 'storm' unwisely unleashed on the world, his base economic theses are ridiculed as bizarre notions completely divorced from economic 'reality'.

That is completely untrue.

For, as Greek Economist Yanis Varoufakis points out, the reality of the western situation and the need for transition was clearly spelled out by Paul Volcker, former chair of the Federal Reserve, as long ago as 2005.

The harsh 'fact' of the liberal globalist economic paradigm was evident even then:

"What holds together the globalist system is a massive and growing flow of capital from abroad, running to more than $2 billion every working day - and growing. There is no sense of strain. As a nation we don't consciously borrow or beg. We aren't even offering attractive interest rates, nor do we have to offer our creditors protection against the risk of a declining dollar".

"It's all quite comfortable for us. We fill our shops and garages with goods from abroad, and the competition has been a powerful restraint on our internal prices. It's surely helped keep interest rates exceptionally low despite our vanishing savings and rapid growth".

"And it's [been] comfortable for our trading partners too, and for those supplying the capital. Some, such as China [and Europe, particularly Germany], have depended heavily on our expanding domestic markets. And for the most part, the central banks of the emerging world have been willing to hold more and more dollars, which are, after all, the closest thing that world has to a truly international currency".

"The difficulty is that this seemingly comfortable pattern can't go on indefinitely".

Precisely. And Trump is in the process of blowing up the world trading system so as to re-set it. Those western liberals, who today are gnashing teeth and lamenting the advent of 'Trumpian economics', are simply in denial that Trump has at least recognised the most important American reality - ie. that the pattern can't go on indefinitely, and that debt-led consumerism is way past its sell-by date.

Recall that most participants in the western financial system have known nothing other than Volcker's 'comfortable world' their entire life. No wonder they have difficulty thinking outside their sealed retort.

"Donald Trump's 2025 Middle East policy balances Gulf investments and coercive diplomacy, pressuring Israel to align with US interests while still sidelining Palestinian concerns. His strategic pivot, marked by $600 billion Saudi deals, signals a transactional shift, with effects on the US-Israel 'special relationship'."

Is US President Donald Trump doing a "balancing act" of sorts in the Middle East? His latest gestures towards the Saudis and Qatar, and even surprising statements about pressuring Israel into allowing humanitarian aid to get to Palestine clearly suggest so.

Donald Trump's Middle East policy in 2025 is, by all indication, a blending economic opportunism, coercive diplomacy, and calculated pressure on allies and adversaries alike. His recent trip to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates — notably excluding Israel — signals a strategic pivot, prioritizing Gulf investments and regional stability over unwavering allegiance to the US-Israel "special relationship."

While Trump's gestures toward Saudi Arabia and Qatar, alongside calls for humanitarian aid to Palestine, suggest a pragmatic recalibration, his approach remains rooted in that transactional "they're ripping us off" mindset. This blunt, Mafia-style tactic — often devoid of traditional diplomacy — employs tariffs, threats, and provocative proposals to extract concessions, thereby leaving partners on edge — as Israel is now seeing.

Yet, beneath the bluster, Trump's moves serve basically as a stark reminder to the Jewish State: Washington holds the reins, and therefore even its closest ally must "behave", so to speak — or pay a price.

"Don't misunderstand me. I want Biden to get better and live many more years, so he can watch his family go broke from running out of influence to sell."
-- Oilfield Rando on X

If the slithering denizens of Okefenokee-on-the-Potomac were nervous about their fates before Sunday — and I'd say they've been rather jumped-up since Nov. 4 — then Maria Bartiromo's Sunday morning session with FBI top dawgs Patel and Bongino must have been a near-death experience for them. Something Roto-rooterish this way comes, officialdom must be thinking, if you can call utter hysteria "thinking."

Washington is nervous because there have been zero leaks from the agency, a condition heretofore unknown in that haunted, pestiferous, reeking marsh. There's plenty of the usual background noise, of course: the insectile hum, the croaking, trilling, buzzing, staccato peeps, chirps, and squeals of the squirming lesser creatures. . . the occasional roar of an ancient gator. . . the guttural cry of the night heron, the sharp yelp of some furry prey meeting its doom, the pulsating, primordial, chthonic cacophony of creatures suffering to mate in the frightful darkness. . . but that's just the news media doing their thing.

If courts can 'strike down' the other branches' actions, as Roberts claims, then that isn't 'co-equal.' It's judicial supremacism.

It's a sad day in America when the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court ignores the basic framework of the Constitution he's supposed to interpret.

That's what happened on Wednesday, when Chief Justice John Roberts took it upon himself to subtly thumb his nose at President Trump and conservatives during a rare sit-down interview in his hometown of Buffalo, New York. In addition to rebuking calls to impeach activist lower court judges for overstepping the confines of the Constitution, the chief justice had this to say about the subject of "judicial independence":

In our Constitution ... the judiciary is a co-equal branch of government, separate from the others, with the authority to interpret the Constitution as law and strike down, obviously, acts of Congress or acts of the president. That innovation doesn't work if ... the judiciary's not independent. Its job is to, obviously, decide cases, but in the course of that, check the excesses of Congress or of the executive. And that does require a degree of independence.

To quote Vice President J.D. Vance, does John Roberts hear himself?

The world should not be controlled by a single power, Myanmar Prime Minister Min Aung Hlaing has said in an exclusive interview with RT. A multipolar system is the best approach to avoid conflict, he believes.

In the interview aired on Saturday, the prime minister stressed that developing countries such as Myanmar have especially suffered "under a unipolar system."

"That is why transitioning to a multipolar world works best for us. It is better to share global resources, to act fairly, to distribute things more evenly. Conflicts arise from inequality, so if we want to avoid conflicts, I believe a multipolar system is the best approach," he said.

Trump's recent grand tour of the richest petro-states of the Middle East saw him feted as an emperor, make "trillion$ for America" in "yuge deals," and meet the "young, attractive," head-choppy leaders of the Arabian peninsula and "the new, free Syria."

Speaking about the "dawn of a bright new day" for the region, the farce of Trump staging what amounted to a MAGA rally in the ostensibly ultra-conservative Saudi kingdom - complete with the YMCA soundtrack - was completed by Israelis literally blowing up his attempt to ease the suffering of starving Gazans when they launched "Operation Gideon's Chariots," another round of intense bombing of blockaded Gaza that UN officials say has turned the tiny enclave into a veritable "slaughterhouse."

Whatever happened to MAGA being different from the House of Horrors that was the NeoCons' obliteration of most of the rest of the region? Were we naive for thinking things would turn out differently?

Also in this NewsReal, the bizarre "neo-Nazi terrorist group" you've never heard of, despite being number one on the FBI's terror watch-list, plotting to "take down America's power grid" and "usher in a far-right theocracy." Finally, strange happenings in London, England, where a young Ukrainian appears to have committed arson against personal properties of the British prime minister - and NOT for political reasons...


Running Time: 01:58:56

Download: MP3 — 109 MB

Trump's tussles with the courts could lead the nation into uncharted waters

Tucked deep in the thousand-plus pages of the multitrillion-dollar budget bill making its way through the Republican-controlled U.S. House is a paragraph curtailing a court's greatest tool for forcing the government to obey its rulings: the power to enforce contempt findings.

It's unclear whether the bill can pass the House in its current form — it failed in a committee vote Friday — whether the U.S. Senate would preserve the contempt provision or whether courts would uphold it. But the fact that GOP lawmakers are including it shows how much those in power in the nation's capital are thinking about the consequences of defying judges as the battle between the Trump administration and the courts escalates.

On Friday, the U.S. lost its last perfect credit rating as Moody's downgraded it from 'AAA' to 'Aa1,' citing decades of rising deficits and interest costs. This ends a perfect rating streak held since 1917. Moody's had warned in 2023 that a downgrade was possible, following similar moves by Fitch in 2023 and S&P in 2011.

The layers of irony behind this downgrade — and its timing — aren't lost on me.

It's a farce, really. By the logic Moody's is now applying, the downgrade should have happened a decade ago, when it became painfully clear that the U.S. had a crippling spending addiction, compounded by a monetary ideology that essentially tried to reverse the fundamental laws of debits and credits.

Yes, it's bad enough that the U.S. now carries $37 trillion in debt. But what's worse is that, despite this massive burden, deficits have continued to grow — clear proof that we've learned nothing about fiscal restraint. Our refusal to stop putting everything on the national credit card, and our complete disregard for basic math and economic reality, should have triggered multiple downgrades over the past decade.